Isla Hoste

Isla Hoste

The island of Navarino is dominated by the 1,195-meter-high (3,921-foot-high) mountains whose toothlike peaks led to their name, Dientes de Navarino. First settled some 10,000 years ago, the island is today home to around 2,000 people. Like so many places near Cape Horn, Navarino's neighbor, Isla Hoste, appears in the logs of the HMS Beagle. It was here that in 1831, with Darwin onboard, Captain FitzRoy returned the Yaghan boy Jemmy Button to his home. Button had been purchased by FitzRoy a year earlier for one mother-of-pearl button, hence his name, and transported to England, where he became a celebrity and even met King William IV. The island appears in Jules Verne's novel The Survivors of the Jonathan as well.